Sophie needs a home

Coconut Creek students assist pit bull, but her future is cloudy

January 17, 2008|By Robert Nolin Staff Writer

Sophie the 2-year-old pooch has cheated the Reaper twice: Once when rescued from the lawn of Coconut Creek High School, gushing blood from a severed artery, and again when she escaped euthanasia at the animal shelter.

Living now with one of the students who took up her cause, Sophie, house-trained and spayed, enjoys a playful, healthy, flea-free existence. But to be permanently adopted, the auburn-haired dog has to overcome another challenge. Sophie is a pit bull.

"If they are a pit bull, they are automatically considered vicious and a danger," said Stephanie Polin of Plantation, a journalism teacher at the school.

Sophie's saga began Nov. 16, when she appeared at the high school. "She was found on the front lawn bleeding when kids were being dropped off," Polin said. "She was lying there looking at them." Some kids wept.

The school's police officer applied a tourniquet to the animal's right rear leg. County animal control officers arrived and caged the dog in their vehicle. The officers said if left alone the animal, who recently gave birth, would have bled to death.

Some students approached the dog, who lifted a paw to the bars and then licked the hands students proffered. "At this moment we made a vow to do whatever we could to get her adopted out or at least into a foster home," Polin said.

Sophie was taken to the Broward Animal Care and Regulation Division's shelter, where she was treated. "It wasn't a big, mean, vicious dog," kennel supervisor Mark Crowder said. Students collected blankets, toys, money, food and a crate for Sophie. Within weeks Sophie was spayed, de-wormed and inoculated. The shelter released her to a rescue group, which turned her over to student Daniel Torres, 17, who provided a foster home. Ideally, she should be in a household with no other pets; she has shown aggression to other dogs.

Daniel takes her for walks, frolics with her in the backyard of his Coconut Creek home and shares his bed with her. "She doesn't do anything bad. She doesn't even bark," he said. "She loves me, I guess."

But Daniel can't keep her. His family expects to move to an apartment that doesn't allow dogs. Polin worries about finding a permanent owner for the 43-pound dog, given the reputation pit bulls bear.

But for the public nature of her rescue and resulting support among students, Sophie's could be the tale of any abandoned pit bull, some two dozen of which are now at the county shelter, unlikely to be adopted.